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A review by dclark32
The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles by Giorgio Bassani
4.0
"A tiny unguarded moment had cost him very dear... little by little, without meaning to, almost all of us began to show him scant respect."
Book two of the "Novel of Ferrara", though the third of the six volumes that I've read. Ostensibly it is the story of a cheerfully naive doctor tormented into despair in Mussolini's pre-war Italy because he is gay. As with other novels in the set, however, Bassani is more concerned with exploring the origins of and bystander reactions to injustice than in documenting the injustice itself. Thankfully gone here are the unwieldy sentences of "Within the Walls", and the narrative here is more straightforward. The depth comes from the carefully written nuances of human behaviour, and the increasing identification of the narrator (who is Jewish) with the doomed doctor.
Though my rating suggests a positive impression - which, to be sure, I had - I regret that I read this just as school was beginning again and so in preparation my schedule became much more busy: it took me a week to read this sub-100 page novella. As much as I enjoyed it, and as much as I found myself thinking of it often when I was away from reading it, I can't help feeling that I lost some of the emotional impact of the writing because of the fragmented nature of my reading. With a second attempt I suspect I would find myself loving it much as I did "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis".
4/5
Book two of the "Novel of Ferrara", though the third of the six volumes that I've read. Ostensibly it is the story of a cheerfully naive doctor tormented into despair in Mussolini's pre-war Italy because he is gay. As with other novels in the set, however, Bassani is more concerned with exploring the origins of and bystander reactions to injustice than in documenting the injustice itself. Thankfully gone here are the unwieldy sentences of "Within the Walls", and the narrative here is more straightforward. The depth comes from the carefully written nuances of human behaviour, and the increasing identification of the narrator (who is Jewish) with the doomed doctor.
Though my rating suggests a positive impression - which, to be sure, I had - I regret that I read this just as school was beginning again and so in preparation my schedule became much more busy: it took me a week to read this sub-100 page novella. As much as I enjoyed it, and as much as I found myself thinking of it often when I was away from reading it, I can't help feeling that I lost some of the emotional impact of the writing because of the fragmented nature of my reading. With a second attempt I suspect I would find myself loving it much as I did "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis".
4/5